Sending in the first string?

Brad DeLong has been chronicling (here and here) the right-wing attack on Gregory Mankiw, appointed to replace Glenn Hubard at CEA. Max Sawicky reposts a very sensible letter Makiw wrote two years ago to the New York Times, proposing higher gasoline taxes in lieu of stiffer gasoline economy regulations.

Objectively, there’s nothing very exciting in the letter, which could be the answer to an exam in a first course in public economics or policy analysis, but in it Mankiw (1) acknowledges that market results sometimes need to be tweaked and (2) says the T-word. Maybe GWB has decided that some adult supervision wouldn’t be a bad idea after all.